


This Isn't A Game

by MissUse



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Character Study, Evil Vlad Plasmius, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kindred Spirits, No Danielle, Slight Alternate Universe, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 07:19:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissUse/pseuds/MissUse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the minute I met him, I knew Vlad was crazy. Even before he revealed he was Plasmius. I had gotten used to him trying to seduce my mother, kill my dad and try to force me to become his son. None of this surprised me anymore. But this was something new. A look into some of the scenes from Kindred Spirits from Danny's POV. No Danielle. One-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Isn't A Game

**Author's Note:**

> An AUish look at some of the events and scenes from Kindred Spirits through Danny's eyes. This version does not have Danielle in it. I really liked this episode because it showed a side of Danny's life that Nickelodeon could only brush the surface of.
> 
> WARNING: This story is on the darker side, so please be aware. If you're not into that, I'd advise reading something else. Also contains some violence, but not too graphic.

From the minute I met him, I knew Vlad was crazy. Even before he revealed he was Plasmius. I had gotten used to him trying to seduce my mother, kill my dad and try to force me to become his son. None of this surprised me anymore.

But this was something new.

My fights with ghosts always felt almost like a game. A dangerous game, sure, but still a game. Particularly with Vlad. Neither of us ended up really hurting each other and we usually spent half our battles insulting and threatening each other more than actually fighting.

Today was different. I immediately lost sight of the little green ghost I was chasing as soon as I saw Vlad floating in front of me. As far as prioritizing goes, I'm pretty good at it, and I could tell from the moment I saw Vlad that the little green ghost would have to wait. Something about him looked… different, although I couldn't place what that might be. I stopped flying in front of him, staring at him in surprise.

"What? Vlad?" I asked, fists clenched as I readied myself for a fight, but Vlad didn't say anything. That was strange. He usually had a smug look on his face every time he saw me, but there was no grin. There was no banter. No threats. No taunts. Nothing.

Something was _definitely_ wrong.

Without a word, Vlad, expression dark and dangerous, raised a hand and fired an ecto-plasmic shot straight at my chest. My eyes widened, too surprised at being attacked so unexpectedly to shield myself as I was blown out of the sky with a scream, slamming down into a car below hard enough to make a nice body-shaped crater in the street beneath it. I grunted, trying to get the air back into my lungs.

 _Ow. Okay. That was weird._ _I need to step up my game._ I struggled to my feet and pulled myself out of the hole my body had just created. I was going to have two nice big bruises on my chest and arm after this. Before I had a chance to recover, I looked up to find that Vlad had landed across the street from me and was raising his hand again. A purple beam shot from his fingertips towards me.

I didn't have time to fly away or dodge it, so I braced myself and fired one back with both hands. The impact of the two beams hitting each other nearly threw me back and I grunted at the surprising amount of effort I had to put into keeping mine stable. Why was I having so much trouble? My fights with Vlad were never _this_ hard. I hadn't expected the blast to be as powerful as it was and the effort of keeping the purple beam at bay was enough to make my arms and legs shake and my feet slide backwards as my whole body was pushed back. My battle stance was keeping me upright, but it was getting tiring really quick. The green light of my own power started to dissolve under the purple of Vlad's, whose beam was only getting stronger while mine started to diminish.

I quickly realized that I was going to lose this fight. How was he doing this? Vlad had never had this kind of power before… Or had he? The thought was alarming and put my current situation into a whole new light. But why would he have been holding back this whole time? Was he testing me to see what my limits were? How much power did Vlad _really_ have?

I was torn from my thoughts when I felt my power start to drain. I looked down to see my hands shaking as the purple beam came inches from my hands and I grunted and panted in frustration and fear as my own beam began to vanish.

I lost it. The blast blew away my own and slammed against my hands and chest, throwing me backwards off of my feet and making me roll across the pavement. When I finally came to a stop, breathing heavily with exhaustion, I looked up just in time to see Vlad's fist coming down towards me. My eyes widened and I rolled away as Vlad's fist made a crater in the concrete where my face had just been. I jumped up, ignoring the fiery protest in my chest and palms, and barely managed to dodge another punch.

"Aren't at least gonna make some stupid crack about my Father? Or a lame come-on about my Mom?" I asked, trying to get some semblance of normalcy. I couldn't keep this up and I needed to goad him into gloating or taunting or _something_. Anything to catch a break to figure out what was going on and, more importantly, figure out why there was an overwhelming fear building in my gut. This wasn't how things worked. This wasn't normal Vlad.

"No, dear boy. Funny, joke-around Vlad isn't here today," he said, then lunged at me again. He was fast. _Really_ fast. Every attack he was made with alarming speed and I was barely managing to avoid the punches and blasts he threw at me. I tried several times to back up or fly off, just to get some distance from him, but it was like he knew exactly what I was going to do before I even did it. Just as I would lift off of the ground, he would suddenly be above me, forcing me to land again and duck out of the way of an ecto-blast. Being on the ground wasn't much better than being in the air with him, either. Every time I ducked or dodged one of Vlad's punches, I'd turn around to find myself inches from getting blasted by an energy beam. No matter what I did, I couldn't get a leg-up on the other halfa and to top it all off, I was almost spent. I could feel myself getting slower and Vlad punches were started to brush me way too close for comfort. There was no way I would be able to keep this up.

I was right. In my attempt to dodge one of Vlad's ecto-blasts, I ended up hurling myself straight into the older halfa's fist, which caught me in the stomach, knocking the air out of my lungs and sending me flying again. Unfortunately, I was too busy trying to breathe to catch myself, so my shoulder ended up slamming into the concrete with a sickening thud and crack. My eyes squeezed shut and I gasped—at least I got some air back— and I found myself rolling again. Eventually, I stopped just a few yards away from school.

I lay on the ground for a moment, feeling the cold core where my ghost powers were kept in the center of my body start to wane. My muscles ached and my arm was screaming at me, but I ignored it, trying to keep a grip on my powers and stay awake, but I was too weak to maintain my ghost form. I felt the white rings appear at my mid-section and travel up and down my body, transforming me back into my human self. As soon as the rings vanished, a wave of fatigue wash over me with such a rush that my vision blurred and my head started to spin. My mind started to become fuzzy and I wanted desperately to shut my eyes… just for a second.

_No! Don't pass out, don't pass out! Vlad's still there! GET UP!_

I groaned as I struggled to lift my head. I looked up and saw Vlad's hand reaching down for me. I wanted to fight him, but I was so tired. Unable to stop myself, I dropped my head and passed out.

* * *

Consciousness crept back to me slowly and it took me several minutes to open my eyes, but when I finally did, I really wished I hadn't bothered. I was in some kind of pod in what I was able to reasonably assume was Vlad's lab. Across the room, I could see similar pods and the door… just a short walk away. I tried to push the glass of my pod open, but my wrists were restrained by cuffs linked to cords in the walls. I tugged at them for a second, testing their strength, but they didn't budge.

_No big deal. I'll just phase through._

My body, familiar with the process and needing little coaxing, touched the cold at the center of my body, pulling my powers and releasing them from where they had been tucked away. The white rings formed around my waist and I started to transform. Then I heard the pod whir into life and I stopped myself, making the rings return to my center and disappear again. The whirring immediately stopped. I looked around the machine, at my wrists, and then at the door that was just a short fly away. Slowly, the dots started connecting in my mind.

Something was very wrong here. Where was Vlad? Why did he leave me unattended with such an easy escape route? The machine I was in didn't look to be made of anything anti-ghost, so why had I been left alone? Vlad was crazy, but he wasn't stupid.

 _He wants me to go ghost, but why?_ I looked around the pod again, trying to ascertain the chamber's purpose, but no clear signs popped out at me. I wasn't really that good with technology. That was more Tuck's area.

"Hey! Let me out of here!" I called, tugging again at the cuffs around my wrists and kicking at the glass as hard as I could. I knew that wouldn't do anything, but I needed to get Vlad's attention. Vlad may have been smarter than other ghosts, but, just like every bad guy I'd come across, Vlad couldn't help but monologue and reveal his evil plans and that was what I was counting on. Yeah, our fight had started off… unusually, but Vlad was still Vlad. All I needed to do was get him to talk or yell at me until I could figure out a way out of this.

My struggling and noise-making worked. It only took a few minutes before Vlad showed up, along with the little green ghost I had been chasing… earlier? Yesterday? I wasn't really sure how long I had been there, but I guessed it was only a couple of hours.

_Maybe Sam and Tucker are already looking for me._

Then again, it wasn't like I didn't have a reputation for disappearing, and with the way I had been treating them lately, they probably wouldn't be that quick to go looking for me. I would just have to get out of this alone.

I watched Vlad cross the room and press a button. A hologram of my mother suddenly appeared next to him, giving him a ridiculous smile that my mother would never offer him. I grimaced in disgust, but I somehow felt revealed to see it. With the way Vlad had acted, I had started to worry that maybe Vlad wasn't Vlad.

Seeing the hologram of my mom gave me a bit of a confidence boost, so I started up on my usual defiant rant. "What do you want with me this time, Vlad?" I asked, saying his name with as much distain as I could. I waited for a second, but Vlad barely acknowledged that I had said anything, busying himself with something on the side of my pod.

_Come on. Banter. Do what you do._

Vlad looked at me, the red eyes of his ghost form staring at me with a hardness I had never seen before. The feeling in my gut I had had before started to build again and I felt a shiver go down my spine that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up on end. I was starting to get nervous. I didn't even know what Vlad wanted with me yet, but as he walked up to the pod, I found myself subconsciously shrinking back from him as he got close to the glass. I wanted to be somewhere else. _Anywhere_ else. Just as long as Vlad was not staring at me the way he was.

I swallowed and shook my head slightly, trying to shake off my racing thoughts. _Get it together. Don't let him think he's getting to you._ I wasn't going to let Vlad think he had any power over me, so I gave him the best glare I could muster. "What stupid scheme did you come up with this time? I don't know if you've noticed, but none of your plans have been working that well for you so far."

"I'm in no mood for your lip, Daniel. Nor am I in the mood to chat with you," he stated, and then took a step closer, making me subconsciously press my back against the wall of the pod to keep a distance between myself and Vlad. "I had hoped that I could trick you into giving me what I wanted, but I see you figured out that this—"he patted the wall of the pod—"isn't just to contain you. Now, one of two things is going to happen today. Either you submit to me…" he walked off to one of the other pods across the room and pressed a button on the side. A screen over the pod pulled away, revealing what lay behind the glass.

I blanched.

It was me. It was _another_ me. It was hooked up to some medical equipment that appeared to be the only things keeping him—or it—alive.

"Or I replace you," Vlad finished, looking back at me.

At first, I thought he was joking; that he was just trying to shake me, but from the look on his face, I could tell that he was dead serious. I stared, speechless- horrified at what I was seeing. "W-what… what… what is that?"

"I'm sure you know very well what he is. You see, as much fun as you have been having playing hero, I've grown impatient," Vlad said, walking back up to me and I couldn't keep the horrified look off of my face. "Your choices are simple. Submit to me, or I force you to morph and take your DNA to help stabilize your clone, after which, I dispose of you."

I blinked, hardly able to believe what I was hearing.

Vlad noticed my indecision and leaned in closer, expression dark, menacing, and completely insane. His eyes gazed into me and I felt sick and, for the very first time, I felt _afraid._ "This isn't a game anymore, Daniel. Now, make your choice."

I looked at him and then across the room at the clone. _My_ clone. That Vlad was going to replace me with. I didn't even notice that I was tugging at my wrists again as my mind switched from fight to flight mode. I just wanted to get out of there. This wasn't happening. Vlad wasn't serious. He wouldn't kill me. He wouldn't do this. I wanted to transform and get away, but I knew that, as soon as I transformed, the machine would take my DNA, and Vlad would have no reason not to kill me. I was stuck. And no one knew I was missing. No one knew I was here. My powers couldn't save me. I was trapped… at Vlad's mercy.

Vlad was right. This wasn't a game anymore.

I swallowed as all options for escape fade. "Vlad… you… you don't… I mean… you can't…" I stumbled, trying to think of something to say to make him snap out of whatever was wrong with him. If I could just get him to listen to reason, maybe he would stop this.

"You have ten seconds before I make the decision for you," Vlad said, watching me.

Ten seconds. Ten seconds to decide what was worse; die or live at Vlad's hands. My brain couldn't wrap itself around either of those options and I started to panic. I looked at him again and saw nothing but a rage that I couldn't explain or identify. There would be no reasoning with him. This wasn't a game. This wasn't like all of our other fights. I needed to make my decision.

Slowly, I took a deep breath, trying to calm my frantic thoughts. When I felt some semblance of control, I tried to make myself look confident as I chose my response carefully, "Vlad… you are one crazed up Fruitloop." It wasn't exactly the best last words, but if this was happening, I was going to make sure Vlad knew he didn't get to me.

Vlad didn't respond. He just turned around as the hologram of my mother appeared beside my pod. Then the little green ghost, which I hadn't been paying any attention to up to that point, flew up to my pod, phased through the glass and then dove into my chest before I had a chance to even yell.

The sudden intrusion in my body and mind sent me into a panic as I felt the ghost trying to get control of me. It wasn't trying to completely over-shadow me, but instead seemed to be digging around for something. It reached down to my core and… _Oh, no._ I felt it latch on to the cold center of my body and knew immediately what it wanted. I squeezed my eyes shut as I concentrated on dislodging it, and I could have easily done so if the machine hadn't suddenly buzzed to life. Before I knew what was happening, my thoughts were scrambled as my body was overwhelmed with blinding pain. A strangled scream escaped my throat as electricity rushed out of the cuffs and into my body, burning my wrists and making my body spasm. It felt like I was being stabbed and burned all over and I thrashed in my bindings as my body moved all on its own due to the electric current jolting my muscles.

Throughout all of this, the ghost reached for my powers again.

I couldn't let that happen. I was _not_ going to let Vlad have my DNA. Through the haze of searing pain, I fought to clear my head enough to fight the ghost off, but by the time I had gained enough clarity to stop it, the white rings were already separated and partway down my abdomen. I pulled them back as the ghost fought to separate them, trying to force me into morphing, almost with desperation. Even though my brain was feeling like a pile of mush and my throat was on fire from screaming, I managed to keep the rings from separating too far from each other.

Suddenly the pain doubled and my anguished screams began to tear the walls of my throat as the pain got impossibly worse. My fists curled around the cuffs, clenching so tightly that my palms were starting to bleed and some of the skin around my wrists had melted. I thrashed and struggled as I fought off the pain and the ghost inside of me, but I was becoming more and more aware that I was getting worn out. Screams were being replaced by wearied gasps and my struggling was turning into twitching. As I grew weaker, something suddenly dawned on me; something I would never have let cross my mind before now.

_I'm going to die._

I couldn't last much longer and I knew it. The ghost had managed to get the white rings to separate to my knees and I couldn't get them to come back up more than a few inches, much less keep them from separating further. I was weak and tired and in pain and I just wanted all of it to go away. Through my struggling and screaming, I managed to open my eyes enough to see Vlad watching me, a sadistically satisfied expression on his face. He was waiting. Patiently. He knew I wasn't going to last much longer. He was watching me die.

_I don't want to die. Not like this. Not here._

Vlad saw me starting to slump and the white rings separating past my shins. The anticipation on his face wasn't missed by me.

_No. No, no, no, no. I can't. I can't die here!_

I suddenly felt a rush of adrenaline as fear and self-preservation became my only discernible thoughts. My eyes flashed green and I grabbed the cords of the cuffs. Concentrating, I let go of my fight with the ghost and reached into my core, taking hold of some of the power there and pushing it back out of my hands and through the cords.

Vlad's eyes widened when he realized what I had done and he went intangible just as the pod exploded. Smoke burst from the shattered glass door and rose up into the air, effectively hiding what lay within it.

I immediately collapsed from exhaustion and although I was still shaking and twitching from the electric current lingering within me, I managed to gather enough strength to banish the ghost from my body and transform into Danny Phantom. The effort I had to put into just doing that was discouraging, but all I could think about was getting away as fast I could, so, despite how strenuous it was for me, I went intangible and tiredly flew out of the smoke, too drained to change my course even as I flew straight through Vlad's chest.

I flew upstairs into the luxurious cabin above and landed on the floor, kneeling as I tried to catch my breath. Everything hurt and ached and just being in my ghost form was exhausting, but I knew I needed to preserve as much of my energy as I could if I was going to get out of there alive.

Before I could even decide what I was going to do next, I shouting out in pain as a blast came up out of the floor and into my chest, knocking me up into the air and making me land hard on my back a few feet away.

Vlad flew up through the floor, looking furious and a sudden wave of terror washed over me.

"G-get away!" I gasped, grunting in pain as I sat up. I was pretty sure one of my ribs was cracked, but there wasn't anything I could do about it at the moment. "Get a-away fr-from me!" I turned and fired an ecto-blast at the elder halfa, but he caught it and dissolved it in his hand like it was a minor nuisance.

"Don't make this difficult, Daniel. You don't have the strength to fight me," Vlad snarled, walking towards me with an enraged scowl.

I struggled to my feet and took a defensive stance, letting my power course through me. "J-just let m-me go," I said, my voice cracking due to all of the screaming I had been doing, but I started to gain momentum as I continued, staring down the other halfa with as much defiance as I could manage. I was scared. No, I was _terrified_ , but I was not going to let him see it. "Even if y-you get m-my DNA, that clone will fail, like everything else you do. My Mom will _never_ love you. I will _never_ join you. And you will _never_ win."

"Brave last words of a child," Vlad said, then raised his hand, powering up an ecto-blast before firing it.

I side-stepped it and fired my own, which Vlad merely swatted off. I was really too weak to do any damage to him, but that wasn't my goal. I just wanted to keep him busy enough to make a break for it. As soon as I had fired off the shot, I jumped into the air and went for the roof.

Vlad grabbed my ankle before I could even manage to get a few feet off the floor and tossed me across the room into a table. The action brought blinding pain in my side as the cracked rib was jostled and I screamed. I wrapped a hand around my abdomen in an attempt to shield it and looked up just as an energy beam came flying towards me. I was just able to manage to go intangible before it hit me.

I fell through the floor back into the lab below, landing on my back with a thud and a grunt, too exhausted to catch myself. Panting and chest heaving in pain, I rolled over on my good side and pushed myself up just as Vlad phased through the floor across from me, immediately stalking towards me, ready to put me back in the pod; back into the execution chamber.

_No. I'm not going back in there. You're not going to win._

I got to my feet; a hand still tightly wrapped around my injured side and faced him. I knew I only had one option left.

_This might kill me, but anything's better than being at his mercy._

Resigning myself to my last hope, I sucked in a deep breath and released all that was left in my core into my ghost wail.

Vlad was caught off-guard by the attack and put his hands in front of his face to shield himself, but it did no good. He was lifted off of his feet and tossed across the room to the wall, watching as all of his work was destroyed. The Maddie hologram flickered several times, smiling absurdly at him before vanishing altogether. The pods cracked and sparked and bent until they were nothing but crushed metal.

"NO!" Vlad cried as the pod containing his clone tumbling over and the glass broke. The clone Danny, now separated from the medical equipment keeping him alive, looked at Vlad and reached out a hand, only to dissolve into a puddle of green goo. Vlad watched and, unable to withstand the power of my wail, transformed into his human self.

I ran out of breath and dropped to the floor on my hands and knees, transforming back into Danny Fenton. I hung my head as I struggled to stave off the inviting embrace of unconsciousness.

 _At least I got him,_ I thought, then managed to lift my heavy head high enough to look over at the other halfa. My eyes widened in fear and alarm as Vlad stood up and transformed again, looking barely fazed as he stalked towards me. His eyes flashed in pure hatred and I suddenly realized what was about to happen. This was it. This was going to be my last moment alive... Vlad was going to kill me.

_I don't want to die._

But there was nothing I could do. I was out of options.

I was going to die.

 _Just say yes to him! Say yes! He's going to kill you! Get up! Run! Do_ something _!_

I thought about it. I thought about giving in and surrendering, but my mind suddenly shifted to my parents and friends. They wouldn't want me to do that. I wouldn't want them to remember me like that.

Vlad stopped and stood over me, and I didn't say anything. I just hung my head and closed my eyes, wishing I had at least gotten a chance to tell my family and friends goodbye.

"You should have accepted my offer, Daniel."

Suddenly something flew through the air and smacked Vlad on the head. The older halfa grunted in surprise and caught the metal boomerang before it fell to the floor. "Oh, what stupidity is this?"

The Specter Speeder burst through the hole in the floor that Vlad had created and slammed into him, effectively squishing him between the wall of the lab and the speeder.

Sam and Tucker jumped out of the speeder and immediately rushed over to me. I hardly noticed them arrive or even gently lift me by shoulders in my struggle to stay conscious. At first, I wasn't sure _how_ I was moving, but as I looked between their faces, my mind finally put it together and my brow shot up in surprise. "G-guys?"

"Danny, are you alright?" Sam asked, looking me over. I had never seen her so worried. I must have looked really terrible. Even Tucker was looking me up and down with plain alarm and horror.

I knew that they could see that I was shaking, that my wrists had nasty burns on them, that I was covered in bruises, my voice was shot, and who knew what else, but I couldn't keep the ridiculous smile off of my face. "You… you guys came… you came for me."

"Of course we came for you," Tucker said gently, like he was afraid that talking too loudly would hurt me. "We're your friends, Danny. It's our job."

"Tucker, help me get him into the seat," Sam said.

"Thank… thank you… guys. Thank you… Thank you…" I said, trying desperately in my haze of utter exhaustion to make sure they knew how grateful I was, but my voice kept getting softer and softer and I was too tired to try to speak any louder. As they gently placed me into the Specter Speeder, my only thoughts were about resting. I just wanted to sleep. As soon as they had deposited me into the soft cushion of the seat, I felt safe enough to shut my eyes. I immediately lost consciousness again.

* * *

I sat on the couch as my parents and Mr. Lancer scolded me for… something. I wasn't really sure what they were mad at me about. I wasn't really listening. I had put on a long-sleeved shirt to hide the bandages on my wrists from them, Sam and Tucker had helped wrap up my side and the bruises had already healed thanks to my powers. Even so, I obsessively rubbed my inured wrists, thinking the day over. No, not just the day, but my life, too.

_This could kill me._

It had never occurred to me before, or at least not seriously. I'd known it on some level, but the encounter with Vlad made me realize how serious of a possibility it was. There could come a time when my powers weren't enough, or I would just run out of luck. For the first time since I had gotten my powers, I had felt _truly_ scared. I didn't want to die. I didn't want this. I had never asked for any of this, but here I was, having just survived the fight of my life and nobody had a clue.

_This isn't a game._

What if Vlad came for me again? He was much stronger than I was and it was only a matter of time before my options ran out. How much longer could I keep this up before it killed me?

Feeling like it had suddenly gotten too quiet; I looked up to find all three of the adults staring at me and froze. I hadn't heard a word any of them had said, but they seemed to want me to reply to something. Careful to clear my throat before speaking so that they wouldn't hear the damage in my vocal cords, I said softly, "What?"

Mr. Lancer stared at me for a long while and for one horrifying second, I thought he had noticed the long sleeves. It was too warm for the shirt I was wearing and I knew it, so I feigned a shiver like I was inexplicably cold. I glanced at my teacher to see if he had bought my subtle act. To my surprise, his expression seemed to soften.

"You know, Mr. and Mrs. Fenton," Mr. Lancer said, still staring at me as he addressed them, "Daniel can make up for the classes he missed. He's a good student, when he puts in the effort. If he'll agree to stay after school for the next week to pick up his grades, I can forget about his tardiness."

I raised a brow in surprise. That was unusual, but at the moment I didn't really care what the reason was. I was just grateful for the inexplicable mercy from my usually strict teacher. I looked at my parents, hopeful that they would agree to the arrangement.

"That seems fair," Dad said. "Oh, and you're grounded."

"Why?" I asked. I really, honestly had no idea.

"You know good and well why," Mom said. "You and your friends stole and crashed the Specter Speeder."

"Oh, that," I said. "Actually, that was my idea. It wasn't their fault. They didn't even know I was going to take it until I flew off with them inside."

My mom stared at me. I knew she didn't believe me, but it looked like the universe had decided I'd been through enough and she let it slide.

The three adults talked a bit more before Mr. Lancer left and Dad wandered off to the lab to try and fix the speeder, but Mom stayed.

She sat down beside me on the couch and looked me over, like she was trying to memorize my every detail.

I shifted away from her, not wanting her to notice the sleeves or the way I couldn't slump without wincing or letting out a dry, breathy cough. When she still didn't stop staring, I turned to her, pretending to be annoyed. "What?"

"Are you alright?" she asked.

I swallowed. _No._ "Yeah, I'm fine. Can you just leave me alone, please?" I said, standing and stomping off upstairs as best as my injuries would allow. I didn't like doing that to her, but sometimes she looked too closely and I couldn't take the chance of her figuring me out.

I wandered into my room and shut the door.

 _This isn't a game_.

The words kept swirling through my head and I couldn't get them to leave me alone. I walked over to the window and leaned out of it, letting the air blow gently through my hair and over my face. I glanced down and suddenly noticed a ghost wandering down the street, flailing its arms as it chased some kid.

Without so much as a second thought, I reached into my core and activated my powers, letting the white rings envelope and transform me.

This wasn't a game. This is who I am.

**Author's Note:**

> I noticed while watching Kindred Spirits the first time that Danny looked actively afraid of Vlad, and for good reason. He was frickin scary in that episode. I wanted to build on that aspect and also on the fact that Danny is only 14. He's a kid. He's not prepared for this kind of thing, but that what makes him so amazing: he does it anyway. I also wanted to point out that I think Vlad held back a lot and I think he's a lot more powerful than he lets on.
> 
> I realize that last sentence switches tenses, but I couldn't word it differently and make it sound right, so I left it.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it. :)


End file.
